After this there was another reorganization of the senate.  At first the necessary value of their property had been limited to ten myriad denarii because many of them had been deprived by the wars of their ancestral estates.  As time went on and men’s possessions became larger, it was advanced to twenty-five myriads, and no one was any longer found who wanted to be senator.  On the contrary, some children and grandchildren of senators, of whom a part were really poor and another part had been brought low through calamities suffered by their ancestors, not only failed to lay claim to the senatorial dignity, but when already placed on the list withdrew on oath.  Therefore previous to this, while Augustus was still out of the City, a decree had been passed that the so-called viginti viri[8] should be appointed from the knights.  Hence none of them was any longed enrolled in the senate without having secured some one of the other offices that lead to it.—­These twenty men are a part of the six-and-twenty.[9] Three of them have charge of capital cases at law.  The next three attend to the coinage of the money.  Four act as commissioners of the streets in the City.  Ten are put over the courts that fall by lot to the Centumviri.  The two who were entrusted with the roads outside the walls and the four who were sent to Campania had been abolished.  The senate had voted during the absence of Augustus another measure besides this, namely that, since nobody could any longer be easily induced to become a candidate for the tribuneship, they might appoint by lot some who had been quaestors and were not yet forty years old.  At this time the emperor made a scrutiny of the whole body of citizens.  Those of them who were over thirty-five years of age he did not trouble, but those under that age who had property of the requisite value he forced to become senators, except in the case of cripples.  Their bodies he viewed himself but in regard to their property he accepted sworn statements, the men themselves taking the oath (with others to corroborate their allegations) and accounting for their lack of funds as well as for their habits of life.

[-27-] Nor did he, while observing such strictness in ordinary public business, neglect the conduct of his own family.  Indeed, he rebuked Tiberius because he had seated Gaius beside him at the thanksgiving festival which he gave in honor of the emperor’s return:  and he censured the people for honoring him with applause and eulogies.  On the death of Lepidus he was appointed high priest and the senate consequently wished to vote him certain honors;[10] but he declared that he would not accept them, and when the senators became urgent he rose and left the gathering.  So that measure was not ratified, and he received no official residence, but because it was absolutely essential that the high priest should live on public ground he made a portion of his own dwelling public property.  The house of the rex sacrificulus, however, he gave to the vestal virgins because it was separated merely by a wall from their apartments.